Saturday, August 23, 2008

What about McCain's abortion record?

There
is no "latitude" in McCain's position on abortion. Interviews with
dozens of people who have dealt with him on the issue--pro-choice and
pro-life activists, Hill staffers, McCain confidants, pollsters, and
staffers--along with a two-and-a-half-decade-long perfectly
anti-abortion voting record, make that clear....McCain also joined
efforts supported only by the radical wing of his party. He voted, for
instance, with only one-fifth of the Senate to remove family-planning
grants from a 1988 spending bill and with only 18 senators that same
year against allowing Medicaid to pay for abortions in cases of rape or
incest. In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was
killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the
Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening
interference outside abortion clinics.

Back in 2000, McCain clashed with then-Gov. George W. Bush over his
unwillingness to change platform language that called for a human life
amendment banning all abortions.McCain implored Bush to join him in wanting to add exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother.....But now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee, the McCain camp is making it clear that he has no plans to push for changes to the platform.

McCain has rarely strayed outside Republican Party line on the issue of choice. He has consistently voted against measures to provide access to contraception and sex-education, and voted to approve anti-choice judges.Planned Parenthood and NARAL have each given him a zero for his record on women's health issues.....Of the 130 congressional votes related to reproductive freedom that McCain has cast, 125 have been anti-choice, according to NARAL

Every hint McCain has ever given that he will do anything but work immediately to restrict abortion rights to his maximum ability is a pander, an attempt to shore up that maverick image at moments when it was to his electoral benefit to run center rather than hard right. These punitive, absolutist anti-abortion votes are the real McCain.

In Florida's GOP primary on Jan. 29, McCain won 45 percent of Republican voters who said abortion should be legal. That's nearly twice the total of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who used to be pro-choice, but now says he has changed his mind. And Giuliani, who says he still is pro-choice, received just 19 percent of those pro-choice voters. NARAL [Pro-Choice America President Nancy] Keenan thinks it's because voters see McCain splitting with Republicans on so many other issues, they assume he must split with them when it comes to abortion as well.

As the McCain campaign seeks to woo disaffected Clinton supporters, the campaign appears to be playing the other side of the coin. Either that, or the campaign's new poster lady (former Clinton delegate Debra Bartoshevich) just veered way off message.

How anti-choice is John McCain? Let's leave the psychological tea leaves out of it and look at his record. In his four years in the House, from 1983 to 1986, he cast eleven votes on reproductive issues. Ten were anti-choice. Of 119 such votes in the Senate, 115 were anti-choice, including votes for the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and for the "gag rule," which refuses funds to clinics abroad that so much as mention abortion. In 1999, the year he said he opposed repeal of Roe on health grounds, he voted against a bill that would have permitted servicewomen overseas, where safe, legal abortion is often unavailable, to pay out of their own pockets for abortions in military hospitals. His record on contraception and sex education is just as bad. He voted against a 2005 budget amendment, sponsored by Senator Hillary Clinton, that would have allotted $100 million to reduce teen pregnancy by means of education and birth control. He voted to require parental consent for birth control for teenage girls and to abolish Title X, which funds birth control and gynecological care for the poor. He voted against requiring insurance companies to pay for prescription contraception, when they pay for other prescription drugs--like, um, Viagra. The beat goes on, and on.

A poll conducted for Planned Parenthood by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in February, 2008 -- here is the .pdf -- found widespread confusion and ignorance about McCain's abortion views among voters in so-called battleground states.

Obama gained 13 points among pro-choice independent women and 9 points among pro-choice Republican women once they were presented with what the pollsters called "a balanced description of the candidates' respective positions on choice."

John McCain at the Saddleback forum in August, 2008 answers the question, "At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?"

At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro life record in the congress, in the senate. And as President of the United States, I will be a pro life President and this presidency will have pro life policies. that's my commitment, that's my commitment to you.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement. “It is clear that McCain is nervous about his diminishing support among Independent women, a key voting bloc that will likely determine the outcome of this election. McCain knows he needs pro-choice Independent and Republican women to win in November, but his extreme position on a woman’s right to choose makes it increasingly difficult to attract these voters.”

Whether abortion is really so important that your vote should depend on it when the nation is at war, the economy is sagging, energy and climate crises loom and tens of millions of Americans are without health care is, of course, your call.Just don't be confused when you make it.

EARLIER

The Republican I least want to see as the presidential nominee next to Rudy Giuliani is John McCain. Over and over McCain has betrayed pro-lifers, and badly, from McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, which shuts us out of the political process close to elections, to the Gang of 14, when he neutered not only us but his own party.

During his 20 years in the Senate (plus four in the House), [McCain] has never failed to cast his vote in favor of whatever abortion restrictions are arguably permitted under Roe v. Wade: bans against partial-birth abortion, abortions on military bases, transporting minors across state lines to obtain abortions behind their parents' backs, and government funding for abortion both in the United States and abroad.

"Ask the pro-life movement where his leadership has been in the six years since 2000 that he’s been running for president," says Gary Marx, who is charged with handling conservative outreach for Romney. "What has he done?"

Gail Quinn, executive director of the Secretariat for Pro-life Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said McCain seemed to be adopting a mushy position to retain conservative support while simultaneously appealing to moderates.

What happened to the "Creator endowed" right to life? How is it that some babies, because of the circumstances surrounding their conception, are excluded from those who have "unalienable rights?" And, since when is it "pro-life" to support the deliberate killing of an unborn baby for any reason?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, when asked Wednesday what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan became pregnant and wanted an abortion, said it would be a "family decision." "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," McCain said, speaking of himself and his wife Cindy. "I would discuss this issue with Cindy and Meghan, and this would be a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else," McCain told reporters in New Hampshire.

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Posted at 05:06:00 AM

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"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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